It sounds like you’re opposed to having representation based on geographic districts at all. Which is a defensible position, but one so far from our current one that I fear any efforts at change are quixotic.
Well, we’re pretty much stuck with the Senate, due to our Founding Fuckups Roman fantasies about elite bodies of the very best sort of people. But at least the House is for us rabble, and if we can’t have fair representation there, well, truly, what the fuck. Constitutionally speaking, you understand.
The Constitution was the wonder of its age, but that age is past. We might well see monotheism as an advance over worshiping mud and sticks but tempus fugitaboutit.
Well, remember how women got the vote in this country? Not all at once, that’s how. It was a shocking idea at the time, going against centuries of cultural assumptions that the public realm belongs to men, the domestic to women. But California and a few other Western states tried out women’s suffrage, and after a few election cycles with women voting, society there did not collapse; so eventually it became plausible to propose such a reform at the national level.
So it could be with proportional representation – let a few states try it first for electing state legislatures and local councils and commissions and boards, and see what happens. Then the idea of adopting it for the USHoR, even if that requires a constitutional amendment, becomes easier to sell.
At present, the biggest obstacle to the introduction of proportional representation in America is that nobody knows what it is. I have often asked candidates for public office their opinions on it, and always, it turns out, I have to explain the most basic concepts to them. Everybody always seems to think I’m talking about racial gerrymandering or something.
The best hope for PR – and Instant-Runoff Voting, and Electoral Fusion – in America, is that, some day soon, all the third-party movements in America, from Communist to Constitution, would awaken to the fact that they have a common interest in such basic structural electoral reforms, and that they should join forces, at least on that one particular set of issues. That would make for a very interesting movement.
FYI: Earlier this onth, the Republican State Leadership Comittee released a report entitled “How a Strategy of Targeting State Legislative Races in 2010 Led to a Republican U.S. House Majority in 2013″. It pretty brazenly argues that state-level gerrymandering was the major reason the GOP held onto the House in 2012:
The report goes on to review the effectiveness of the strategy in particular states. Michigan is IMO the most striking:
The first downside to proportional representation is that it gives too much power to the parties, at least in the forms I’ve seen. The parties control who goes on the lists and where. The people can no longer express preferences to candidates directly. Parties already have too much influence in America, in my opinion. Congress would do better with less party discipline, than more.
The second downside is that representatives elected by proportional representation do not directly represent any people. They represent the party. If a person wants to complain to their representative, who do they talk to? Each representative can push off the person by saying talk to another representative. And since a person can’t do anything to prevent a particular representative from being elected (short of throwing out all of their same-party comrades), the representatives won’t feel any particular responsibility to a person.
Time cures all ails?
Time wounds all heels.
So this is how the Republicans are trying to get their “permanent majority.” Just a few years late, s’all.
Majority? Who needs a majority?
With every ‘solution’ I think up, I find very difficult problems to deal with, much as each of the proposals above seems to create as many problems as it solves.
So, I suggest eliminating districts, as such. Simply make sure, every ten years, that the number of Representatives and Elector votes for each state is correctly adjusted (the reason for the census, after all); then, let ‘parties’ put up their slate of candidates for Representatives for a statewide election. Each party can run up to as many candidates as their are seats to fill. Even Libertarians, Greens, etc. There will still have to be petitions to get your name on the ballot, such that an independent who gets enough petition signatures may run as his or her own ‘party’.
The voters vote only for parties, not for individuals. After the tabulation of votes, each party gets its share of representatives to be allocated to the list it ran. If they plan properly, there won’t be many people who ran who don’t get in.
Example…Republicans get 45%, Democrats also 45%; Libertarians, 5%; Greens, 3%; John Independent, 1%; all others, a total of 1%.
There happen to be 31 seats available. Round off. Dems and Reps each get 13.6 seats, round up to 14 each. Libertarians, 1.51, round up to 2; Greens, .9, the get the last seat.
The parties then decide by drawing, who gets the seats. Some won’t get in and will get political appointments to other jobs, most likely, anyway. Each party gets a piece of the action, especially benefitting fringe parties.
this might encourage the Tea Party, for example, to split from the Republicans. The Black caucus to split from the Democrats. etc.
At any rate, Presidential electors can run the same way. A vote for each qualified candidate totaled and divided according to percentages, rounded off.
Why not just have the Presidential race be decided by popular vote? The Electoral College was set up when the fastest method of communication was a messenger on horseback, and really hasn’t been needed since the invention of the telegraph.
And everybody understands that if a President keeps a campaign promise that was targeted specifically at the residents of, say, Iowa, it’s accidental.
The electoral college was not set up the way it was due to communications problems but due to a desire to give States power in electing the President. It was intentionally designed to not reflect the popular vote but a consensus of “electors” who represent semi-sovereign geographical entities. They were intentionally thus weighted in such a way that some States would benefit much more from the system than others.
Well, maybe we should reconsider whether that was a good idea or not.
Whatever the original motivation was (and IIRC, the original setup had the second place finisher become Vice President), I think it’s safe to say that the founders did not intend to concentrate almost all the power into a handful of swing states, which is what we have today.
We should scrap the damn thing, and just have a popular vote, along with national standards for polling place dates, hours, ballot format, and waiting time.
crucible, the solution you propose is exactly what proportional representation is. We’ve already been discussing it for a while.
It may be hard to remember nowadays, in post-rational America with its dysfunctional politics, but America’s system of government worked rather well for almost 200 years. For this reason, I think suggestions for radical change may be misplaced.
The suggestion that Representatives be elected by party-list voting ignores that many citizens rely on “their” Representative to interface with the Federal government. (I was generally too shy to contact my Representative, but Leon Panetta certainly knew that my mother was one of his constituents. 
)
Similarly, while most of us were dismayed that GWB became President while losing the popular vote 47.9 to 48.4, the difference between these percentages is tiny – the real problem isn’t the 0.5% “error”, but the 47% of Americans willing to make the irrational choice.
Nor is this uniquely dysfunctional-the Federalists during the War of 1812 make the Tea Party look like bipartisan centrists in comparison not to mention the Antebellum Southern “Fire-eaters” in Congress.
[/QUOTE]
And also Ralph Nader. The few times the modern “progressives” asserted themselves, like some urge them to, much as the Tea Party base does for the GOP (in '48 with Wallace, with McGovern in '72, and with Nader in 2000) the result has almost always been a disaster for the Democrats.
Well I think it had merits at the time, I was just pointing out lets not get the history wrong. Stuff like holding elections in November but having new Presidential terms begin in March were because of 18th century technological concerns, the electoral college was not.
I’m honestly not too concerned about electoral college versus popular vote, I honestly don’t care on that issue. I’m not a populist so I have no intrinsic problem with the electoral system being non-populist, but I’m not opposed to direct popular vote either.
To me the biggest issues on my radar in government reform is a system designed to make it very hard to get legislation passed and to force compromise, as both a check on an overpowerful government and a check on political factions had a good, reasonable place at one point. But in strongly democratic societies with 200+ years of liberal democratic traditions I think it’s just a structural impediment to reasonable governance, and can be changed with no threat to liberty.
I’m not saying we have to go full Westminster (in the last 5 years though I’ve gained a large appreciation for Westminster systems), but we need some way to break up these messes. For any reform along those lines we probably need multi-member districts, because even independent commissions ala the UK will lead to disparate results with single member districts. Combine that with some ability to eliminate divided government when necessary and you’d have some good reforms.
We don’t have to make our President tied to whichever party is in power, but maybe give him the power to dissolve the lower house of congress and force new elections if compromise is impossible.
Most of my reforms would also keep the Senate structurally the same as it is now but turn it into a mostly powerless advisory body ala the House of Lords.
If you thought the GOP couldn’t sink any lower when it comes to gerrymandering, check out this weasel move in the Virginia State Senate:
Republicans were stymied with the 20-20 split because the state’s Lt. Gov. would have cast the tiebreaker and likely (for political reasons) killed it. An analysis of the newly-planned districts (by a Democratic strategist) has the 2015 state election flipping 7 Dem seats, giving the GOP a 27-13 supermajority.
And if you’re surprised that it’s legal to redraw districts mid-term (i.e. without requiring a new census first), recall that when Texas made a similar move in 2003 (one which led to Democrat legislators fleeing the state to prevent a quorum that could pass the new map), the Supreme Court ruled that mid-term redistricting was legal.
Not that it makes a difference, but I’ll just note this line as well:
On Martin Luther King Day.
Meanwhile the same legislature is looking to adjust their electoral vote apportionment to make sure the Republican wins:
As it notes, in the last election that would give the guy that lost the state by 150,000 votes nine out of the state’s thirteen electoral votes. To support this party is to be an enemy of democracy.